I needed a break. I’ve been working hard on the osPID for several months, and I just needed to not look at code or control algorithms for a little bit. Nothing says “break” like an out-of-left-field project.

I only started knitting recently. Something that’s been bothering me about it is the length of the needles. They’re 14″ long, and I’ve been worried they’ll be bent while riding in my backpack.

It occurred to me that some sort of collapsible needle might be useful in this situation. Taking my inspiration from elastic tent poles, I got to work on my “not PID” project.(more…)

About 5 months ago I sent an out-of-the-blue email to RocketScream electronics asking if they wanted to help me build an open source PID controller. It’s been far more challenging than I expected, but today I get to announce the release of my first open source hardware project: the osPID!